THIS reporters’ room, for all its handsome furnishings, never took on an
agreeable atmosphere to me; it was too gloomy—and solely because of the
personality next door. The room was empty when I entered, but in a short
while an old drunken railroad reporter with a red nose came in and sat
down in a corner seat, taking no notice of me. I read the morning paper
and waited. The room gradually filled up, and all went at once to their
desks and began to write industriously. I felt very much out of tune; a
reporter’s duty at this hour of the night was to write.
However, I made the best of my time reading, and finally went out to
supper alone, returning as quickly as possible in case there should be
an assignment for me. When I returned I found my name on the book and I
set out to interview a Chicago minister who was visiting in the city.
Evidently this city editor thought it would be easier for me to
interview a Chicago minister than any other. I found my man, after some
knocking at wrong doors, and got nothing worth a stick—mere religious
drive—and returned with my “story,” which was never used.
While I was writing it up, however, the youth of the Jovian curls
returned from an assignment, hung up his little wrinkled overcoat and
sat down in great comfort next me. His evening’s work was apparently
futile for he took out his pipe, rapped it sonorously on his chair,
lighted it and then picked up an evening paper.
“What’s doing, Jock, up at police headquarters?” called the little man
over his shoulder.
“Nothing much, Bob,” replied the other, without looking up.
“By jing, you police reporters have a cinch!” jested the first. “All you
do is sit around up there at headquarters and get the news off the
police blotters, while we poor devils are chasing all over town. _We_
have to earn our money.” His voice had a peculiarly healthy, gay and
bantering ring to it.
“That’s no joke,” put in a long, lean, spectacled individual who was
sitting in another corner. “I’ve been tramping all over south St. Louis,
looking for a confounded robbery story.”
“Well, you’ve got long legs, Benson,” retorted the jovial Hazard. “You
can stand it. Now I’m not so well fixed that way. Bellairs, there, ought
to be given a chance at that. He wouldn’t be getting so fat, by jing!”
The one called Jock also answered to the name of Bellairs.
“You people don’t do so much,” he replied, grinning cheerfully. “If you
had my job you wouldn’t be sitting here reading a newspaper. It takes
work to be a police reporter.”
“Is that so?” queried the little man banteringly. “You’re proof of it, I
suppose? Why, you never did a good day’s work in your life!”
“Give us a match, Bob, and shut up,” grinned the other. “You’re too
noisy. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me yet tonight.”
“I got your work! Is she over sixteen? Wish I had your job.”
Jock folded up some copy paper and put it into his pocket and walked
into the next room, where the little assistant was toiling away over the
night’s grist of news.
I still sat there, looking curiously on.
“It’s pretty tough,” said the spirited Hazard, turning to me, “to go out
on an assignment and then get nothing. I’d rather work hard over a good
story any day, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s the way I feel about it,” I replied. “It’s not much fun, sitting
around. By the way, do you know whose desk this is? I’ve been sitting at
it all evening.”
“It doesn’t belong to anybody at present. You might as well take it if
you like it. There’s a vacant one over there next to Benson’s, if you
like that better.” He waved toward the tall awkward scribe in the
corner.
“This is good enough,” I replied.
“Take your choice. There’s no trouble about desks just now. The staff’s
way down anyhow. You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?”
“Yes; I only came down from Chicago yesterday.”
“What paper’d jeh work on up there?”
“The _Globe_ and _News_,” I answered, lying about the latter in order to
give myself a better standing than otherwise I might have.
“They’re good papers, aren’t they?”
“Yes, pretty fair. The _News_ has the largest evening circulation.”
“We have some good papers here too. This is one of the biggest. The
_Post-Dispatch_ is pretty good too; it’s the biggest evening paper.”
“Do you know how much circulation this paper has?” I inquired.
“Oh, about fifty thousand, I should say. That’s not so much, compared to
Chicago circulation, but it’s pretty big for down here. We have the
biggest circulation of any paper in the Southwest. McCullagh’s one of
the greatest editors in this country, outside of Dana in New York, the
greatest of any. If McCullagh were in New York he’d be bigger than he
is, by jing!”
“Do you run many big news stories?”
“Sometimes; not often. The _Globe_ goes very light on local news. They
play up the telegraph on this paper because we go into Texas and
Arkansas and Louisiana and all these other States around here. We use
$400,000 worth of telegraph news here every year,” and he said it as
though he were part owner of the paper. I liked him very much.
I opened my eyes at this news and thought dubiously of it in relation to
my own work. It did not promise much for a big feature, on which I might
spread myself.
We talked on, becoming more and more friendly. In spite of the city
editor, whom I did not like, I now began to like this place, although I
could feel that these men were more or less browbeaten, held down and
frozen. The room was much too quiet for a healthy Western reportorial
room, the atmosphere too chill.
We talked of St. Louis, its size (450,000), its principal hotels, the
Southern, the Lindell and the La Clede (I learned that its oldest and
best, the Planter, had recently been torn down and was going to be
rebuilt some day), what were the chief lines of news. It seemed that
fires, murders, defalcations, scandals were here as elsewhere the great
things, far over-shadowing most things of national and international
import. Recently a tremendous defalcation had occurred, and this new
acquaintance of mine had been working on it, had “handled it alone,” as
he said. Like all citizens of an American city he was pro-St. Louis,
anxious to say a good word for it. The finest portion of it, he told me,
was in the west end. I should see the wonderful new residences and
places. There was a great park here, Forrest, over fourteen hundred
acres in size, a wonderful thing. A new bridge was building in north St.
Louis and would soon be completed, one that would relieve traffic on the
Eads Bridge and help St. Louis to grow. There was a small city over the
river in Illinois, East St. Louis, and a great Terminal Railroad
Association which controlled all the local railroad facilities and taxed
each trunk line six dollars a car to enter and each passenger
twenty-five cents. “It’s a great graft and a damned shame, but what can
you do?” was his comment. Traffic on the Mississippi was not so much
now, owing to the railroads that paralleled it, but still it was
interesting.
The already familiar noise of a roll-top desk broke in upon us from the
next room, and I noticed a hush fall on the room. What an atmosphere! I
thought. After a few moments of silence my new friend turned to me and
whispered very softly:
“That’s Tobe Mitchell, the city editor, coming in. He’s a proper ——, as
you’ll find.” He smiled wisely and began scribbling again.
“He didn’t look so pleasant to me,” I replied as softly.
“I’ve quit here twice,” he whispered. “The next time I go I won’t come
back. I don’t have to stay here, and he knows it. I can get a job any
day on the _Chronicle_, and wouldn’t have to work so hard either. That’s
an evening paper. I stay here because I like a morning paper better,
that’s all. There’s more to it. Everything’s so scrappy and kicked
together on an evening paper. But he doesn’t say much to me any more,
although he doesn’t like me. You’d think we were a lot of kids, and this
place a schoolroom.” He frowned.
We dropped into silence again. I did not like this thought of difficulty
thrust upon me. What a pity a man like McEnnis was not here!
“He doesn’t look like much of a newspaper man to me,” I observed.
“And he isn’t either. McCullagh has him here because he saved his life
once in a fight somewhere, down in Texas, I think—or that’s what they
tell me.”
We sat and read; the sound of city life below had died out and one could
hear the scratching of reporters’ pens. Assignments were written up and
turned in, and then the reporters idled about, dangling their legs from
spring-back chairs, smoking pipes and whispering. As the clock
registered eleven-thirty the round body of Mitchell appeared in the
doorway, his fair-tinted visage darkened by a faint scowl.
“You boys can go now,” he pronounced solemnly.
All arose, I among them, and went to a closet where were our hats and
overcoats. I was tired, and this atmosphere had depressed me. What a
life! Had I come down here for this? The thought of the small news end
which the local life received depressed me also. I could not see how I
was to make out.
I went down to a rear elevator, the only one running at this time of
night, and came out into the dark street, where a carriage was waiting.
I assumed that this must be for the famous editor. It looked so
comfortable and sedate, waiting at the door in the darkness for an
editor who, as I later learned, might not choose to leave until two. I
went on to my little room at the hotel, filled with ideas of how, some
day, I should be a great editor and have a carriage waiting for me. Yes;
I felt that I was destined for a great end. For the present I must be
content to look around for a modest room where I could sleep and bide my
time and opportunity.
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